


A Game of Chicken

by avantegarda



Series: It's the New World, Darling-A 19th-20th Century AU [3]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 19th century hipsters and puns, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Gen, Humor, Vienna, that is all you will find here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-25 14:49:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18576691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avantegarda/pseuds/avantegarda
Summary: Music school isn't exactly what Maglor imagined.





	A Game of Chicken

**Author's Note:**

> I have something of actual substance planned for this series next but first, have some 19th-century music geeks and linguistic puns. That is all this is.
> 
> Thanks to Tumblr, I now know that "kana" is Finnish for "chicken." I have used this knowledge only for evil, as you can see.
> 
> This story is set immediately after "Prodigy."

_ Vienna, Austria _

_ 1878 _

 

At the age of fourteen, I was packed off to music school in Vienna. This, as it turned out, was an excellent idea.

I’d been dreaming of going to the Royal Austrian Academy of Music since I was eight years old, and all it had taken for me to finally be sent there was a disastrous year and a half at boarding school, a severe illness, and my father annoying the Academy’s director at dinner until he agreed to give me an audition. I’d passed the audition, of course, and so I left London for Vienna in August of 1878 with a new violin and very high hopes.

I loved the Academy as soon as I arrived. The school was housed in a former 17th-century palace, full of twisting corridors and macabre paintings, and had the best acoustics of any building I had ever been in. Unlike St. Francis, my old boarding school, there were no curfews and no locks on the classroom doors, as it was universally understood that inspiration could strike at any moment.

The room where I would be staying at the school contained beds for myself and two other boys, one German and one Italian. I’d spent the previous few months learning German from a tutor my father had hired for me, with the reasoning that if I wasn’t going to be in school I may as well be spending my time learning something useful. I enjoyed the language, and could speak it well enough at this point, though I was far from fluent. Italian, I didn’t speak at all yet, but was eager to learn. Nico and Lukas both seemed friendly enough, and I was hoping to wrangle a few free language lessons out of them. But not immediately, of course. I was exhausted from traveling, and my first order of business was a nap.

I was awoken, some time later, by Nico urgently shaking my shoulder. “Maglor, you must wake up and go to the director’s office. Herr Meissner would like to see you.”

In reply, I rolled out of bed and fell face-first on the floor, with great dignity. “Am I in trouble already?”

“No, I don’t think so, but it did sound like he wanted to see you immediately.”

With a sigh, I pulled myself up off the floor and made my way to Herr Meissner’s office, only getting lost twice on the way.

The door was partially open, and I tentatively pushed my way inside. Herr Meissner, wiry and white-haired as ever, sat behind a heavy oak desk, chatting rapidly in German with a tall young woman in a blue dress. When he saw me, he said something that translated to either “this is the student I’ve been talking about” or “this is the salad I’ve been complaining about.” I had to assume it was the former, as I’ve often been complained about but very rarely called a salad.

“Master Gates!” Herr Meissner said, switching to English with a broad grin. “How wonderful to see you. I was beginning to worry that formidable father of yours had decided to keep you in England after all.”

“Oh, no, sir,” I said. “Father’s been most supportive of my coming here.” Specifically, he’d said that he was glad to send me someplace that would tolerate my playing the violin at all hours, but I was very nearly certain he’d been joking.

“Good, good. Well, now that you are here, introductions are in order. Master Maglor, this is Elemmírë Virtanen, one of our top students at the Academy. Miss Virtanen, this is Maglor Kanafinwë Gates, a very promising new talent.”

Elemmírë Virtanen inclined her head slightly in greeting, though her expression was one of mild suspicion. With her yellow hair and tall, sturdy frame, she had the look of a Viking shieldmaiden who could toss me out a window if I put one toe out of line. Being a skinny little chap at the time, I confess I was somewhat intimidated.

“I am hoping, Miss Virtanen, that you will be willing to act as a guide to Master Maglor during his first few weeks here,” Herr Meissner went on. “Perhaps you could take him on a brief tour of the building now?” It was an order, not a request, and so even though Elemmírë looked even more irked she simply nodded and gestured for me to follow her.

“So!” she said sharply, once we were out in the hall. “You are English.” Her voice had an unusual, lilting accent I couldn’t quite place.

“Yes,” I replied, nearly jogging to keep up with her long strides. “I’m from London. How about you?”

“Helsinki. I am a long way from home, of course, but one does what one must for music.” Elemmírë stopped abruptly, looking over her shoulder at me appraisingly. “Herr Meissner has many good things to say about you, but you must forgive me if I am skeptical. The English are not known for being musical.”

“Well, be fair, I  _ am  _ half-Irish,” I said, stung. “And some of history’s greatest poets have been British.  _ To be or not to be,  _ and all that.”

“Poets, yes, but you have few great composers. It is those terrible British boarding schools, I think. They are not conducive to music.”

I couldn’t argue with her there, as the year and a half I’d spent at boarding school had been one of the worst epochs of my life. Before I could say anything, though, Elemmírë was striding forward again.

“This is our main concert hall,” she said, gesturing at a set of large doors without opening them. “You will  _ not  _ be performing in here, not until you graduate.  _ If  _ you graduate. Did Herr Meissner say that your middle name was  _ Kanafinwë?” _

“Er, yes,” I said sheepishly, trying to keep up with the abrupt shift in conversation. “It’s a bit silly, I know. We’ve all got middle names like that in my family, it was my father’s idea. Finwë is my grandfather’s name, and Kana is Ancient Greek or some such for ‘commander.’”

Elemmírë chuckled. “In Finnish ‘kana’ means ‘chicken.’ Did your father know this?”

“I assume he did not, no.”

“It’s a good name for you, though,” she remarked. “A little English chicken, you are. We will have to see if you can be turned into a nightingale.”

I had absolutely  _ no  _ idea how to respond to that.

 

Elemmírë reluctantly continued to show me around for the next few weeks, though she wasn’t much inclined to pleasant chatting. It wasn’t difficult, however, to find out more about her as I settled into my new home. She was something of a legend at the Academy, and my classmates were eager to fill me in on all the details.

“Elemmírë is a prodigy,” my bunkmate Lukas informed me, voice full of awe. “She began her studies here when she was only twelve—even younger than you!—and she has sung and played the piano for the Emperor himself.”

“She has a four-octave vocal range,” my new friend Giovanna from singing class sighed. “I once heard her sing a note so high she shattered a glass. Once she called me ‘adequate’ and it was the greatest day of my life.”

I had to admit, all this gushing about Elemmírë was something of a blow to my ego. Growing up in my family, I was used to being the best musician in the room by default, and it was discouraging to be constantly comparing myself to both my very talented classmates and a girl who had  _ played the piano for the Emperor of Austria _ . Perhaps it’s the competitive nature I inherited from my father (along with my excellent cheekbones and lack of volume control) but I felt I  _ would not be able to rest _ until I had somehow managed to make Elemmírë Virtanen respect me. How exactly I planned to do this was unclear, as she still insisted on calling me “chicken,” which was not the most respectful nickname.

My classes were going well, overall. They were far from effortless, of course—I usually fell into bed at the end of the day with sore fingers and a sore throat. But I was doing what I loved, and had made a wonderful group of friends who were as passionate about music as I was. According to my brothers, my letters home this time were all but unreadable due to the amount of “gushing” I was doing.

The school itself wasn’t the only thing to gush about—the city of Vienna itself was extraordinary. I spent my rare hours of freedom wandering the streets, staring at my surroundings in awe, occasionally following the faint sound of music to a café where I would end up befriending a Hungarian accordionist or a family of Romany folk singers and forcing them to teach me every song they knew. It is a testament to how wonderful of a city Vienna is that this behavior was considered completely normal.

My fifteenth birthday was in February of 1879, and my friends decided that the occasion was special enough to warrant a celebration; as such, they dragged me to the most elegant café we could afford and bought an pile of cakes, as well as entire bottle of wine. I had rarely been allowed alcohol at home, other than the occasional mulled wine at Christmas, and the Riesling that Lukas had ordered was much stronger than I was used to. Unsurprisingly, I was soon quite tipsy and got into an intense argument with Giovanna over whether or not I should cut my hair (she thought long hair was elegant; I agreed but pointed out that all my brothers already said I looked like a girl and I didn’t want to give them more ammunition). 

“Look over there!” Nico whispered, interrupting us after some minutes of bickering. “Isn’t that Elemmírë Virtanen?”

We all looked, trying and failing to be subtle. Elemmírë was indeed in the café, sipping wine and chatting intensely with a pretty Viennese girl.

“I’m going to go talk to her,” I declared. Had I been completely sober, I would likely not have said this, but at fifteen two glasses of wine was enough to make me much bolder.

“Are you mad?” Giovanna hissed. “She doesn’t want to speak to us.”

“Why would she not? We’re all at the Academy together, she ought to be happy to see us.” I stood, unsteadily, and walked briskly over to where Elemmírë sat.

“Hello, Elemmírë!” I said, considerably louder than I intended to. “How lovely to see you here! It’s my birthday, you know.”

To my surprise, she did not looked pleased to see me. “Is it, chicken? How delightful for you.”

“Isn’t it just? You really ought to join us, you know. We have an entire bottle of Riesling. Well, most of it is gone now. But we  _ had  _ it.”

“Ellie, who is this boy?” asked Elemmírë’s friend, wrinkling her nose. 

“ _ This  _ is a very silly young English boy from the Academy who thinks he is God’s gift to music,” Elemmírë snapped. “And who refuses to leave me alone despite the fact that I have no desire to speak to him.”

It was as if she had punched me in the chest. I stepped backwards, feeling my face heating up. “I see,” I managed. “Awfully sorry to disturb you, then. Won’t happen again.”

I did make it through the rest of the evening with my friends before stumbling back to the dormitory and having a good cry out of pure humilation. 

 

At the end of a student’s first year at the Academy, it was traditional to give a short recital to prove that they had actually learned something over the past year. These recitals were simple affairs, usually with just the student themself and a few professors in attendance, though other students were welcome to sit in. I had strongly considered asking some of my family members to come to mine, though in a rare flash of common sense I realized that it was highly impractical to ask them to spend money and time on a trip from London just for half an hour of music.

This didn’t prevent me from spending several sleepless nights preparing for that half-hour, though. I had decided to play two tunes from Mozart (as we were, after all, in Austria) and two things I had written myself. It was a bold move, I was told, for a first-year student to play their own compositions at their recital, but my father had always told me that a bold move was the only move worth making. I knew, though, that if I was going to pull this off my own tunes would need to be  _ perfect. _

I will admit, I also had some vague fantasies of Elemmírë showing up for the recital and being so impressed she immediately forgave me for bothering her on my birthday. I wasn’t entirely sure why she had been so upset—perhaps I’d embarrassed her in front of her friend?—but I’d felt guilty about it ever since, and was desperately hoping for a chance to apologize. 

As a result of all of this, I forgot to sleep or eat anything other than marzipan potatoes for about three days before my recital, finally passing out from exhaustion and sleeping for what had to be nearly eighteen hours. When I eventually woke, it was three o’clock in the afternoon on Friday, fifteen minutes before my recital. Cursing, I stumbled out of bed and ran a comb through my hair, grabbing my violin case as I rushed out of the dormitory. In the hall I nearly crashed into Professor Schmidt, the no-nonsense woman who taught the cello.

“Awfully sorry, Professor, my recital’s in Hall Seven and I didn’t want to be late…”

“Ah, but didn’t they tell you? They’ve changed the location of your recital,” she told me. “You will be in the main concert hall now.”

I blinked. “May I ask why?”

“It’s bigger.”

Upon entering, I could see why the recital had been moved; the place was utterly packed. My heart sank as I wondered what, exactly, had attracted such a large audience. My primary theories were that everyone was eager to watch the new British student fail, or that my father had somehow managed to bribe half the school into coming.

Glancing out over the audience as I made my way onto the stage, I saw my chums Giovanna, Lukas, and Nico squashed into the very front row in between several professors. All three waved to me cheerfully, and I could feel my stomach unclenching, just a tad. As much as I wished Mum or Maedhros were there to cheer me on, at least I knew there were a few people who wouldn’t boo me.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” I said to the assembled throng, lifting my violin out of its case with slightly trembling hands. “I am Maglor Chi-Kanafinwë Gates. Please hold all tomato-throwing until the end.”

I put the bow to my violin and got to work.

 

No one threw tomatoes at me, thank the Lord. As a matter of fact, there was a considerable amount of applause. Herr Meissner pulled me aside afterwards and told me he was pleased I’d come to the Academy and he would certainly be writing to my father about my progress, and I even managed to get a “well done” from Professor Schmidt. After nearly everyone had left the concert hall, I climbed back up on the stage and sat, eyes closed, trying to imprint every moment of the afternoon firmly into my memory.

“So, you have completed your first year at the Academy. Well done.”

I looked up to see a familiar blonde figure towering over me. “Elemmírë!” I exclaimed, my voice squeaking like a little boy’s. “I didn’t...I didn’t realize you were going to be here. What made you come?”

Elemmírë shrugged. “Curiosity, like everyone else. Everyone is very interested in the Academy’s new star pupil.”

“I’m the  _ what  _ pupil?”

“Don’t act like you didn’t know, Master Gates. People are beginning to talk about you nearly as much as they talk about me. They think it’s you who will be performing for the Emperor in a few years.”

“And what do you think?”

“Me? I think you have talent, that much is plain. But when we met, I could sense that you were content to simply get by with what God gave you rather than trying to improve in any way. I disapproved of this, of course.”

“Well,” I said, embarrassed. “That might have been true once. But I don’t think it is anymore.”

“Nor do I, as it happens. You’ve certainly proved today that you are willing to work hard.”

“Oh, I can testify to that. I feel as though I haven’t slept in weeks. Incidentally, I’m very sorry for bothering you and your friend at that café a few months ago. I’m not sure if you could tell, but I was a bit tipsy at the time.”

“I could tell, yes. Perhaps I was too quick to be upset with you. I am not like you, Maglor. I give myself little time for friends, and the ones I do have—I guard closely.” It looked as though Elemmírë was considering saying something more, but shook her head firmly. “So I apologize to you, too.”

“No hard feelings, then. But if you don’t mind my asking, what did you think of the performance”

She cocked her head to one side, narrowing her eyes. “Honestly, chicken?”

“Honestly.”

“Honestly, it was…” To my very great surprise, she smiled. “Adequate.”

I treated myself to a very large slice of cake when I got back to the dormitory. Really, I felt I’d earned it.

**Author's Note:**

> Every time I write something from Mags' POV it becomes like 80% jokes. Mags thinks he is one of the 19th century's Great Wits. (Is he? Who knows)


End file.
